Ruth Chase Celebrates Venice of the 1970s, When Growing Up Meant Dodging Bullets
Ruth Chase with two of her paintings at the opening of "West of Lincoln" Jennifer Swann Eddie Hadvina points to the painting of himself as an 11-year-old Boy Scout. In it, he’s wearing an olive green cap and a red kerchief with his khaki uniform, a skateboard in one hand and a trophy in the other. On his left shoulder is a patch representing Venice ’s Troop 34, which he joined at his mother's insistence. “That’s where all the trouble started,” says Hadvina, now 56 and sporting a gray goatee. “That’s where I met all my Venice Hoodlum friends ,” he says, referring to a street gang that was active in the neighborhood in the 1970s. Hadvina's parents, both Hungarian immigrants, visited Venice on their honeymoon in 1960 — Hadvina says he was conceived during that trip — and decided to move there two years later. Hadvina discovered skateboarding when the sport was still brand-new and being pioneered in the neighborhood by people like Stacy Peralta, one of his peers. But H...
